The Offer

Open a new Columbia bank Advantage Plus Account and receive a bonus of $200 or rebate of 6-months from qualifying subscriptions like Spotify, Netflix and Hulu when you complete the following requirements:

$100 for receiving a qualifying direct deposit within 60 days of account opening

$100 for making a bill payment within 60 days of account opening

The subscription bonus isn’t worth considering as it’s a maximum of $13.00 per month (total of $78 over six months)

The Fine Print

To receive the above bonuses, the account must still be opened and the account must be in good standing at the time we are ready to credit the
funds. These cash bonuses will be reported to the IRS.

The $100.00 cash credits are not available if the new account is funded with money already on deposit with Columbia Bank.

All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

$9 Monthly Fee

This is avoided with an average daily balance of $500 or if you’re under the age of 23.

Last dot point: The Choice of One Bonus: Up to a $200 cash bonus with qualifying Direct Deposit or Bill Pay activity OR Rebate of 6-months from qualifying subscriptions like Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu with an auto debit from your Advantage Plus Account

ADVANTAGE PLUS CHECKING ACCOUNT MONETARY BONUS
You will receive a $100 cash credit to your Advantage Plussm Checking Account after we have seen that a qualifying direct deposit transaction was
posted to your Advantage Plussm Checking Account within 60 days after the date you opened the account. The $100 will be credited to your account
within 60 days after we have determined that you satisfied this requirement. Only one $100 credit will be made in total for qualifying direct deposit
activity to this account within the first 60 days of account opening.
You will receive a $100 cash credit to your Advantage Plussm checking account after we have seen that a Columbia Bank online bill payment
transaction was debited from your Advantage Plussm Checking Account. The debit must occur within 60 days after the date you opened the account.
The $100 credit will be credited to your account within 60 days after we have determined that you satisfied this requirement. Only one $100 credit
will be made in total for the Columbia Bank online banking bill payment activity.
To receive the above bonuses, the account must still be opened and the account must be in good standing at the time we are ready to credit the
funds. These cash bonuses will be reported to the IRS.
Once this initial 60 day period has passed, you will no longer be eligible for these bonuses.
The $100.00 cash credits are not available if the new account is funded with money already on deposit with Columbia Bank.

By the way the min to open is only $1! A no-brainer. Printed out forms and mailing in, we shall see how long it all takes. I was surprised to see there is a branch in the next town over from my mailing address, never heard of it before.

I understand the confusion, we have been receiving quite a few calls in regards to this and we are working to resolve this issue. As of right now, we are requesting that our customers visit the U Choose website and indicate which bonus they would like to receive. To get more information regarding the U Choose program, please visit this link: https://columbiabankonline.com/home/personal/debit-cards/uchoose-rewards . From this link you will be able to access their website and register.

If you would like further assistance, simply reply to this email. We can also be reached by telephone at 1-800-522-4167 Monday – Friday 7:30am – 8:00pm, and Saturday 8:00am – 2:00pm.

So i applied and got approved.Looks like no chex. I then applied for wife and got rejected for “ID” Verification” i called up and they said that it was rejected as a duplicated due to same address and last name within 30 days. Can go into branch and finish. Maybe i’ll just wait 30 days to retry.

I think they do. I just applied and printed the signature sheet to mail in. Below my signature is a section titled “COMPLETED BY BANK PERSONNEL” with 2 boxes for each applicant. One for Experian Authentication and the other for Chex Systems. It doesn’t list anything else so no way of knowing how many accounts they consider too many.

Opened both this $200 promotion one and the $100 promotion account. Banker said BOTH accounts require that I do both activities (DD AND BP), so I will do both as it doesn’t really hurt me more than just opportunity cost really.

I gave them my VA licenses, and the account is currently set to VA… Just told them that I was moving here for a job…So if anyone is passing through NJ, u guys can do this also…

I opened the account at the rt9 branch…

Waiting in Fulton lobby to snag there $150 here too… 20 minute wait so I thought I would write this then.

My intent is to push from discover and capital one in one account as a test run while I did from work in the other account… And bp a credit card a couple of times from each account

Thank you all so much! I love this website! 🙂
I never even knew we had Columbia Banks in South Jersey. There are several within a half hour drive from Philly and probably a 1 hr drive from Delaware, so if anyone is coming to NJ just for this, don’t feel like you need to trek to Bergen County.
Thanks Bhanna, I will check out Fulton Bank too.

Heads up to applicants. I have an Non-NJ Drivers license which caused my application to fail. I had to call them to find out this was the case after not getting any communications from them in 10 days.

As far as I was aware I got the initial thank you for your application email. The online app (it’s long and annoying FYI…) also produced a pre-populated signature card that I printed out and mailed to them.

In order to apply with an out of state ID you need to physically visit a branch. Pretty disappointed at their lack of communication (notice that my app had been rejected after it was successfully submitted) and their refusal to let me mail / fax in documentation (after I’d already mailed them the signature card) to prove where I live (I’m a homeowner in NJ in an eligible area).

Update – i got a letter in the mail yesterday that my account was denied due to chex report.Wife also got that letter, as well as indications there were issues with ID verification, so it looks like, at best, they sometimes pull.

I transferred $550 from Schwab and $550 from Ally. I also took a $13 dollar payout from topcashcack.com. I suspect I will not get the bonus as these will all have to be manually reviewed. I should at least get the $100 bill pay bonus.

Their system must not care about how long an account is open, cause I funded the opening to the minBal and still see that I got hit by the 9.00 Maintenance Service Charge. Gonna have to call now to get it removed, that doesn’t even make sense.

Just FYI I was charged $9 for monthly maintenance fee even though I’ve never had less than $500 in the account. I assume this is because they run their “average daily balance” for calendar month, so I didn’t hit $500 from 7/1-7/31. I’ve secured messaged them to remove the $9 fee.

Does anyone recall what is the max you can fund with at opening? I need to move $500 out of my new Citizens acct and the jackasses charge $3 for an external transfer. I was loving them right up until I read that. (I should be more forgiving since Citizens allowed $1000 in cc funding but still, I can’t stand paying bank fees. grrr)

I went in branch last week because I was having issues with opening my online account. During the conversation, I asked about choosing the bonus and the rep mentioned that the $200 offer is a better deal (obviously) than the subscription offer.

Without being prompted, she then mentioned that to activate the direct deposit, either have an employer initiate it, or just transfer money from another bank and both will count as DD. Can’t believe she straight up told me that an ACH will be just fine.

These guys are a small bank, but everyone I’ve dealt with has been straightforward and very helpful thus far.

Wow, I am also surprised they would come right out and say how to trigger the bonus.
I too had trouble getting online access. It turned out when I sent my signature card I forgot to include a copy of my driver’s license. I did that before I left for vacation so I will check when we get home if that has fixed it.

New DP:
Opened account on 8.12.17
Initial funding of $500 from Citizens Bank triggered the dd bonus of $100.
$500 posted on 8.17.17
$100 bonus posted on 8.31.17

Now to pay a bill and get the other $100 bonus!
They make it easy to do bill pay. Offering several credit card banks with address already stored such as Chase, Bank of America, etc. so all they need from me is my cc acct #.

It appears that any bonuses due are posted on the last day of the month. Several posters reported that their bonus posted July 31. My dd bonus posted on Aug 31.
We’ll soon see if my BP bonus posts on Sept 30.
Just got online access for my son. I dd & bp for his asap and see if he gets them on the 30th as well.

9/11/17 Opened
9/25/17 Did a $100 bill pay/push from our little local bank, Republic, to this acct for the dd bonus
9/26/17 Scheduled a bill pay from this acct to a Chase cc, for the bp bonus
9/30/17 Both bonuses posted! Even on a Saturday but not until later in the day.

I can still see the $200 offer when I click on the link at the top of this page.
“The Choice of One Bonus: Up to a $200 cash bonus with qualifying Direct Deposit or Bill Pay activity OR Rebate of 12-months from qualifying subscriptions like Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu with an auto debit from your Advantage Plus Account”

Once you click above on Direct link to Offer, it takes you to Columbia’s website. Look for the gold-brown plus sign. Straight down from that is a paragraph with bullet points at each sentence. It’s the last sentence of the paragraph.

+1. or Ctrl+F “The Choice of One Bonus: Up to a $200 cash bonus with qualifying Direct Deposit or Bill Pay activity OR Rebate of 12-months from qualifying subscriptions like Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu with an auto debit from your Advantage Plus Account”

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